I've written about this before, in the
early days on this blog. How the local drugstore in my neighborhood had,
for a time in the '70s, a big, replenishing bin of out-of-date Marvel
comics, which I later determined had to have been sold to the chain "off
the back of the truck" and been reported as pulped. Either way, it gave
me a handy target when my interest in the Human Torch led me to seek
out issues of FANTASTIC FOUR.

(excerpt)

Thirdly, the artwork was much cleaner and more engaging that what I'd
encountered in the Marvel books up till this time. Partly that was due
to the work of George Perez in the first two issues, but even more of
the credit, I think, has to go to Joe Sinnott. Joe's just about my
favorite inker ever, whose work always added a clean, sleek finish to
any assignment he worked on. A fixture on FANTASTIC FOUR for something
in the neighborhood of fifteen years, he kept the characters looking and
feeling like themselves throughout, despite any changes of penciler
along the way.

Fantastic Four #177 was the first Marvel comic I truly went out and bought.

I'd had bad experiences with the Marvel
books that had made their way to my hands earlier (see Captain America
#183). But by 1977, I was becoming more and more interested in the
history of comics. And in reading the Human Torch story reprinted in
Jules Feiffer's Great Comic Book Heroes and the chapter on the Torch and
other Timely heroes in The Steranko History Of Comics, I became
interested in the character.

So contrary to all previous behavior, I
went out with the intention of picking up a Marvel comic book starring
the Human Torch. I made my way to the Genovese Drug Store, where they
had a huge bin of Marvel books priced at 6 for a dollar. (I only
realized years later that Genovese must have been getting their books
off the back of a distributor's truck, since, being that all the books
were several months old, they must have been returns which were reported
as pulped) Digging through the large bin, I pulled up Fantastic Four
#177-179.

I read the three comics on the floor in
the living room. And I found them to be pretty darned entertaining,
particularly the first two issues by Roy Thomas, George Perez and Joe
Sinnott. Similar to my previous Marvel experiences, I still didn't
understand everything in these books--but they made me interested enough
to want to figure out the parts I couldn't follow. I hunted up the
current issue--#187, also drawn by George and Joe, but written by Len Wein--at the local 7-11, and I was off.

I think it helped that FF #177-178
were among the most Schwartz-like issues of the book in a long time,
with the colorful, wacky villains of the Frightful Four holding open
auditions for their fourth member--something I could easily see the
Flash's rogue's gallery doing.